Seagate CEO speaks on all things storage

Forbes is running an interesting interview with Seagate CEO Steve Luczo. The lengthy piece covers everything from the impact of the Thailand floods to Luczo's thoughts on solid-state storage. Naturally, Luczo doesn't see SSDs replacing mechanical hard drives. He views flash storage as a complementary technology and points out that there simply isn't enough NAND production capacity to meet the demand for storage—and that's without taking prices into consideration.

In fact, Luczo contends the demand for storage capacity is so high there will be a media shortage in the next two years. More capital needs to be "put to work" to keep up, he adds, which is probably why he's talking to a publication like Forbes.

Speaking of the need for more investment, Luczo says the industry will have to spend a billion dollars to recover completely from the Thailand flooding. He expects shipments to be up to pre-flood levels by the end of the year but notes that drive makers are currently shipping more lower-capacity units to make the most of the parts they have available. "A lot of critical suppliers are still recovering," according to Luczo.

The interview also discusses networked and external storage, which have been new areas of focus for hard drive makers, and the cloud, which needs gobs of storage for all the data folks want to access remotely. Mechanical hard drives may be squeezed out of certain markets, but it's hard to see the overall demand for affordable, high-density storage decreasing anytime soon. Thanks to TR commenter Xylker for the tip.